Tough Week, But Whatever

This week we learned that the most promising of mrguy’s cancer drugs might be causing him to lose his sight. And that in addition to the many “-ologists” on our team we now need to meet with two surgeons: one for the brain and one for the eyes.

And one of the cats had tummy trouble and pooped down his leg and then tracked it all over the laundry room, dining room, hallway, dining table and the bills on the dining room table. That part was pretty funny — TELL ‘EM, GORDIE!!

It happened again the next day, to a lesser extent, but he was equally unhappy about being washed in the kitchen sink the second time. No bills were harmed on day two. 

On day three mrguy cracked me up by following Gordon to the cat box, just in case. All good.

That might have all happened the same day that they laid off 200 people at the forklift factory (including two bandmates and a former bandmate, plus a neighbor, and some people who I have worked with for just shy of 24 years). Who can remember? It’s a lot, People. 

And yet there was still joy to be found. Disconsolate but somehow deciding to ask for help for once, I asked a friend if she was available for a walk. She brought another friend and we did what I call the “buns of steel” walk, a steep staircase at the end of the street that ends in additional challenging (yet suburban) terrain. That, my friends, was the joy I found. Sweet friends who I hope secretly boast to their other friends that I make them do the “buns of steel” walk. They ask way too many questions on a walk, and I love them. 

I was this lucky a year ago but I just didn’t know it.

Addendum -- Incoming! Apparently Cack and Blick are using the long weekend for some spring cleaning. They found this item in their garage and shared this photo. 

I tell ya, man, branding is everything. I shared this post on a fb group and a friend from high school who I didn't recall was on that group shared her hopes for mrguy, and I invited her to do the buns of steel with me. We will be making a date.

Rudy-Trudy

A fellow on a fb group that I follow spoke dismissively about a granola bar that was only worthy of giving to the parrots. He said they were "heath bar things" and I didn't realize he meant "health bar things," so I went on a tangent in a comment, telling a story that I can't believe I haven't written down before. 

There are feral parrots in this area. One morning many years ago my friends were on their balcony drinking coffee and looking at the birds in the trees. Their conversation went like this: 

"I'm going to lure one of those parrots." 

"With what?" 

"With this Twix bar". 

As promised, Adam held the Twix bar in his hand. A bird flew to Adam and perched on his arm. Adam smugly brought him indoors. It was just like Adam to be able to charm the birds out of the trees.

About 12 years later Rudy (an African grey parrot) was acting funny. Adam looked in the cage and Rudy was revealed to be Trudy, as she'd laid an egg. She continued to lay the odd egg from time to time after that.

So ends the story of Rudy-Trudy. 

Or so I thought -- another update! I went to Safeway yesterday to stock up for the weekend. Our Safeway shares space with a Petco. In the parking lot I was walking toward the store behind a lady carrying something, and our eyes both leapt to a handsome man who seemed to be the spokesperson for the color goldenrod. Crisp goldenrod sweatshirt, wearing Timberlands, carrying a large matching dog bed. The woman stopped in her tracks and said something about it. I blurted out "You look amazing!" and then I realized that the woman was carrying a birdcage. 

"Is that an African Grey?" 

"Yes, he likes to shop with me"

Indeed!

No, You Didn't

Here's where I decide to break down every episode of a series. I'm not sure why, but I have nobody to talk to about this show: Dinner Time Live with David Chang.

For the last few months I've been trying to make my way through it. First, in the most frightening days of mrguy's illness. I didn't want to eat, so I really had to stop during episode 5, which was my first episode and was super gross. Do I love the show? Do I hate it? Do I find myself watching it on Sundays as a treat at the end of the week? The last point, definitely. Do I find myself describing it below in a super snarky way? Yes. I think I am getting something out of my system. Hold onto your hat.

Readers of mrsguy may recall that on our ill-fated cruise last year I spent most of the trip by myself in my stateroom while mrguy had Covid in his stateroom. Thank goodness I brought a book, Eat A Peach, by David Chang, which I'd found on the free table at work. 

Here's celebrity chef David Chang and I, eating dinner:

and celebrity chef David Chang and I enjoying the blue waters of the Caribbean from the veranda of our stateroom:

As far as things go, we had a good hang. Without mrguy, and suffering through my own wicked chest cold, celebrity chef David Chang was there for me.

That said, in his memoir he was pretty open about his douchey behavior, and by the end of the book I didn't like him very much. Back to the free table, Eat A Peach! But when mrguy was first hospitalized in February I needed a friend and I started watching the new show by my former shipmate Celebrity Chef David Chang anyway.

My first episode (#5) featured guests Ike Berenholz and Seth Rogan, who were being treated to a "high-low" dinner. The "high" part of the dinner was Osetra caviar -- in a container as big as a fez. Urp. Seth Rogan is not my cup of tea, and the sound of his laugh makes me violently uncomfortable. But together he and Ike Berenholz are amazingly funny. By the fifth minute of the show, Ike Berenholz's napkin looked like something you'd see on the subway tracks if you mistakenly looked down. He needed a linen intervention. Seth Rogan? Turns out that he has a lifestyle brand called Houseplant, which has some beautiful ceramics for the smoking of the potses, which is something I do not do. But hey.

The food was silly. Caviar on various kinds of Pizza. Osetra on Pizza Hut pizza? "This should be on Onlyfans". Did they say that? Or did I say that? I wrote it down. Here's a recipe that made me feel ill:

In a low-slung serving bowl, layer salt and vinegar potato chips. Followed by a layer of wilted onions. Add a few sunnyside eggs, and cover with a half inch layer of Osetra caviar. Finish with a few snipped chives and some cilantro. Poke the eggs and stir. Eat with trepidation...and spoons.

Later, they eat caviar on a Chris Bianco pizza. The guy is supposedly making the best pizza today. I dunno. I grew up on the Coast and ate at Chez Panisse in 1984. How is Bianco's pizza different? Don't get me wrong. The guy himself seems so sweet, but the pizza looks kinda similar. The guests really preferred the Hut pizza as the best demonstration of high/low.

They continued to eat an insane amount of food. I actually stopped watching this episode for a few weeks because of the potato chip, pot and napkin grime, but after I had binge-watched everything else on Netflix imaginable I returned, expecting to continue to hate it. I did not : )

+++

Episode 1: With Rashida Jones and Steven Yuen. They were the perfect guests. Rashida Jones asks a LOT of questions about the food. AlotaLotaLOT. It's fun to see her, as herself, talking. She's super charming, and I've only experienced her be really quiet, trying not to be seen. My final comment on this episode is that it should have been subtitled: These People Have Wicked Clean Soles.

Episode 2: Iliza Schlesinger and Paul Scheer. Bad camera work leads to several shots cutting from Ilana to Paul Scheer's hairy arm wielding a spoon. Fun for you, maybe, but I found it off-putting.

Episode 3: Nick Kroll and John Mulaney. Hilarious. So good.

Episode 4: Fortune Feemster and Terry Crews. So charming and delightful.

Episode 5: No, You Didn't. The previously-described fish egg fez.

Episode 6: Bert Kreischer and Bill Simmons. Dave makes a timpano and it is really impressive.

Episode 7: Sebastian Maniscalco and King Bach. I want to check out King Bach's comedy, and Sebastian Maniscalco is dishy but needs to dye his hands to match his face. Didn't we learn this during the Trump presidency? Maybe we'll learn during the second Trump presidency (sigh). I mean you have two choices: dye your hands to match your face or don't put your hands near your face. Oh wait. I learned nothing. There was a third option: don't care. Maybe that's it.

Episode 8: The meat episode. Nicole Byer (loves ranch dressing) and Joe Manganiello, who is the ex husband of Sofia Vergara. Not to be confused with her ex partner who may still be suing her for custody of their frozen embryos. They ate Chicken Bacon Ranch Larb, and talked about Primanti Bros, in Pittsburgh, which I thought I wanted to visit until I stopped watching to look at the menu. Seems like you need a ladder to eat the sandwiches, which kinda grosses me out.

Episode 9: No meat, no problem. Sarah Silverman and JB Smoove, two vegans who have different attitudes toward the subject. Sarah Silverman seemed soooo uncomfortable and joyless in her veganism. JB Smoove bursts with love for the vegetable. I always try to give Sarah Silverman the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she's a person who needs to have her material worked out beforehand? 

I hope this is the episode where they learned that their strength in casting dinner guests is pairing people who already have a relationship or even a passing acquaintance before inviting them to eat with Dave.

Episode 10: Speaking of perfect casting, witness Aziz Ansari and Cord Jefferson, that gorgeous man who won an Oscar. So good. They are themselves, and they have such good rapport. Aziz Ansari's story about how the production made him bring his own alcohol, glasses and lemons to the shoot was super funny. This pairing lets both of them shine. 

Episode 11: Ditto. Ron Funches is adorable and Maya Rudolph is funny, knowledgeable and queenly all at the same time. As an aside, the new episode of Loot is available. Wooooooo!!!!! Who cares what they ate?

Episode 12: Nikki Glaser and Pete Holmes, who is definitely better as a single. His opinions about vegetarianism are filled with menergy. Nikki Glaser, on the other hand, would have been better paired with a different guest. She is delightful. 

A thought: maybe they should stop putting vegetarians and vegans together and find a compatible pair of people where maybe one is a vegetarian and maybe the other person is a meat-eating non-asshole who is down to eat a vegetarian meal.

Episode 13: Lil Jon and Jay Pharoah. Adorbs! Please invite them every episode.

aaaaaand then Dave had to have back surgery and there was a pause in production.

Thank you for listening. 

This has been mrsguy on Dinner Time Live With David Chang. 

Relearning

Today's prompt was about relearning, or at least that's what I wrote about ;)

Back in the day, a department at work gave up one of the treats in their hallway snack bowls and replaced it with a bowl of folded up paper slips containing sayings — do-gooder, feel good aphorisms. At the time, I snarked that these were “virtue snacks”. Like Dove, but without the chocolate. At the time, I was anti virtue and pro calorie even though I knew that the virtue snacks could be good (again, that word!) for my well-being.

During the pandemic, my sister sent me a package for my birthday that contained a similar set of aphorisms, and whaddaya know? One really resonated with me. “Do something today that your future self will thank you for.” I think of it now when I’m stuck between action and inaction. Today I will probably use it to unstick myself about finding someone to help with occasional housekeeping while my husband is ill and we spend a lot of time on the road.

This idea of anti-procrastination keeps drawing me in, and I do believe it is a lesson I will continue to learn and unlearn. A few weeks ago I read an interview with the artist Alexandra Grant, speaking of her godmother, Alice: “I’m still really lazy and so I still play this game with Alice, where I’ll look at the dishes in the sink and go, ‘I don’t want to do those dishes.’ But then I’ll think, ‘If they were Alice’s dishes, would you do them?’ And then I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’d do her dishes.” 

I’ve done “Alice’s dishes” this week as if they are my own (and, ahem, they are). 

So yes, I have that pale lavender paper with the words about doing something today on my whiteboard at home. But just so you don’t think I've gone soft, there are a few pre-pandemic thoughts there as well.

PS So this is how good my sister is -- I looked at the back of the lavender paper and these must have come with a donation to the American Heart Association. And I don't know who sent me the deeply weird cat comic (maybe my oldest friend in the world that nice boy?), but I have continued to find it funny decades later.

PPS The writing group asked me to read my piece, above, which is a first.

Crab Cup

This is my crab cup:

It's by Angie:

I found it on the free table at work a number of years ago and made it my work coffee cup. How can you not like those oversized eyes on thin eye stalks? It gives me so much darned joy.

In March 2020, when we were told to find some work we could do at home and go do it there, I brought my crab cup home, sensing that my cup and I could otherwise be separated for a long time. It's lived here ever since. At home it functions as my beer receptacle during my Alzheimer's caregiver support groups which fall on the first and last Wednesdays of the month. It's impolite to drink out of a beer bottle during a support group, but if I'm going to talk about my mom and my wacky family in my free time, you bet I'm going to drink a beer while doing it. The crab cup is now code. I can tell mrguy that I'm using the crab cup tonight and he'll go "Right, it's Wednesday".

I love you, crab cup.